World in Brief / RUSSIA

Suspect held in banker's killing

Russian police detained a suspect in the September slaying of senior central bank official Andrei Kozlov.

The Prosecutor General's Office identified the suspect only as the head of a large commercial enterprise. But defense lawyer Igor Trunov said his client, former banker Alexei Frenkel, had been detained as a suspect in the case.

Trunov said Frenkel denied involvement in the killing. Frenkel was chief executive of VIP Bank, one of many financial institutions closed in the last three years by the central bank on the initiative of Kozlov, the central bank's first deputy chairman. Kozlov was shot point-blank in the head as he left a soccer game.